Black Belt Dojo

On a more positive note ...?

I started my positive psychology course last week. Which basically seems to ask 'what makes people happy and how can people live more fulfilled lives?'  One of the key points coming out is that about 40% of how optimistic/pessimistic people are is entirely under their own control -i.e. it's not genetic or controlled by external events. So, of course, it looks at strategies to help people control how they can feel more positive.

Something that struck me particularly given the current business environment was the advice to avoid over-thinking - to stop going over problems over and over again, as it just puts people into a downward spiral.

I connected this thought to a PR Week column I read recently which questioned whether the mass media have been irresponsible in their coverage of what I like to call 'the current madness'. How much of a role have the media played, they asked, by telling us over and over again that things are getting bad, by using increasingly frightening language such as 'crisis' and hence destroying confidence, creating panic and helping us to talk ourselves into a downward spiral and bring down house prices, share prices and entire organisations?

I then connected that thought to something I remember years ago from my comms degree about the effects of news. Which was that watching and reading the news tends to make people more worried in life, because by its nature, news reports negative events.

I then connected THAT thought with comments I've heard employees make in focus groups - not just recently but consistently - that the main message they take away from their organisation is 'It's tough. We're having a challenging year. It's going to be hard work. And next year will be even harder'.  I remember one person asking me "They always talk about 'engagement ... but how can we be 'engaged' when all we ever hear is 'life is tough and it's going to get tougher'?  And we hear that message every single year." I also often here people say they feel they are told about things that are going wrong, but rarely recognised for the things that are going right. Organisations, they say, should make sure they celebrate the good, too.

One of Kotter's 8 steps to effective change  is to create short term wins. To give people goals, however small, that they can achieve, and celebrate when those things have been achieved. So they DON'T just feel as if life at work is 'one long, hard slog', and no matter how hard they work, they're not really moving forward anyway.

More on this in another post, as this one is probably getting too long, but I wonder what balance you think your organisation strikes between giving out the 'competition is tough, it's hard, we need to change, it's going to get even more difficult' over and over again ... and celebrating and recognising success, too?

Sue

 

Showing your human side

I've been interested to hear employees giving their views about leadership blogs on my travels recently, and taking two very different perspectives.

In one company, people loved a leader's new blog. There were lots of comments about how it was 'nice to see leaders are human', and it had prompted a lot of discussion in people's teams. In fact, the leaders who I heard most often quoted as examples of great communicators were referenced because they made things human, referred to their families and told personal stories.

In another, people were bemused by it and seemed to think the leader must have gone a bit potty to be telling them about all this personal stuff - they wondered why s/he thought they would want to know, and took it as a signal that this person must be out of touch.

It's a difficult balance for leaders to strike, don't you think? In my leadership comms workshops, we often talk about about the need to be a normal, fallible human being, not some kind of over-polished spin machine who faithfully trots out the company line, but doesn't connect with people or engender trust. In fact I remember reading (although I really wish I could remember where!) about a theory on leadership that talks about revealing 'allowable weaknesses'. Presumably enough to show your human side but not so much that people get a bit jittery about this person running the business that apparently has no idea what they're doing...

Some leaders don't like the idea of showing themselves, either. They see the 'personal' side of themselves as ... well ... personal.  Work colleagues get their professional persona. Friends and family get to see the other side.

It's interesting thinking about all this from my own perspective, as a person with a blog.  Some people who read this are personal friends. Some people I've met on workshops. Some people I've never met at all. Yet over the past 2 years, I've told you quite a lot about myself. You know the things that are important to me, and that I have a permanent battle with work/life balance. You know I have my under-confident moments. I've talked about some of the things that drive me mad, make me laugh or upset me and things that have made me think.

Actually I'm quite a private person, so it can feel strange and a tad uncomfortable to talk about those things to people I don't know. Sometimes I wonder if you think 'what IS she going on about?!', or don't know why I think you might be remotely interested in a subject or my opinion on it. On occasion I've held back from posting things with those thoughts in mind. And on the fallibility point, a couple of years ago I was featured in a coaching book as someone who had overcome a massive fear of presentations. They wanted to use my case study on their publicity website, too. My response? "No way! I run workshops for a living! I can't have clients knowing I used to be petrified of them!" (Now I've told you about that, too. Doh! I promise I don't shake in my shoes when I run them these days!)

What's your perspective on this? Do leaders in your organisations show their human sides, and to what extent? Does it work for them, or has it backfired? And how do we help them to strike the right balance and figure out whether the risks of revealing their real selves - including their failings - are worth the payoffs?

Sue

 

Call me picky, but ...

This is a bit impressive, isn't it - two posts in one day!  I've just got back in from the latest Black Belt and opened my post to find a customer satisfaction survey from the local council, and the very first paragraph moved me to do a tiny bit of venting ...

Note to local council comms people (i.e. my local council - not everyone from local councils!):

1. If you head your letter 'Your Views Count', it kind of undermines things if your first sentence then says 'All Council's are required to carry out a Customer Satisfaction Survey on a regular basis.' Oh, right. So you're not really that bothered about my views then - you just have to do it?
2. By the way, 'All COUNCIL'S' are not required to carry out a survey.  'All COUNCILS' are.
3. Linked point. 'xyz is the independent research company that are carrying out the survey'. Is it? Or are they? Make your mind up.
4. Getting someone to proof read your comms before they go out might not be a bad idea ...
5. There isn't a point 5. I have to admit to being curious about whether I'd find further gems in there, but after seeing the questionnaire was 15 pages long I'm afraid it went straight in the bin ...

What was Liam saying in his last comment about 'getting the basics right'? 

Sue

New perspectives

Someone made me stop and think yesterday. Actually someone a good friend introduced me to on Facebook. We've been chatting away on email, and last week he asked me about my job.

I gave him a quick overview of what I do, together with the comments you will have heard me make before relating to the things I like about it. Being able to make a difference to people, being interested in what makes people tick, getting to see different places, getting to be nosy about other people's companies and jobs.

I also commented on the things I'm less keen on. Constant travel playing havoc with my social life. Sometimes feeling isolated, miles away from home with just room service for company. Needing to take on less so I don't let work take over totally (I know, I know - self-inflicted).

Yesterday, he mailed me back to tell me some more about his own work and made his own comments on mine.  His job sounded pretty hard to me. He totally believes in it and is obviously very talented. But it doesn't sound the easiest path to choose.  And his comment on what I do? 'It sounds like one of those dream jobs.'

It stopped me in my tracks. It also made me think back to those times I've heard similar comments from friends over the years. Being on a train to Edinburgh and feeling shattered ... then getting a text from a friend saying 'I wish I got to do something other than come into the same place every day'.  Getting exasperated with a conference supplier and stressing about how I could get myself to the video editing suite I'd double-booked a meeting with, and later having a friend say 'wow! Editing videos! And what an amazing sounding conference-  you're so lucky!' The kind of things I take for granted but, when I think about it, are actually pretty good. And not the kind of combination you'd find in most jobs.

Since I got that mail yesterday I've found myself comparing what I do to quite a few other friends' jobs, and feeling a combination of a bit guilty for the times when I let it drive me mad, and a lot lucky for the things I get to do.  I have quite literally - as I've been typing this - just got the link through for a short course in positive psychology I've signed up for. I read a book about it recently and found it pretty interesting - it's all about what makes people feel fulfilled and positive. One of the things I remember from the book is that spending some time every day reflecting on the things you have to feel good about goes a long way towards making you feel more happy, more of the time.

It's funny how it sometimes it just takes an odd comment to stop you in your tracks, isn't it. But that one did. I'm off on holiday for a few days tomorrow and will be writing myself a list of all the things I love about what I do. Then I'll stick it on my noticeboard for those times when I forget.

Sue

Getting our priorities straight

Earlier this week I was asked to give my opinion on what the priorities/big issues will be for internal communicators over the next year or so.  These were my three offerings:

1. Change communication - mindful of what's happening in Western economies, surely this has now has to be firmly at the top of the list. Even the 'safest of the safe' companies no longer seem to be, and whilst redundancies and restructures have been a fact of life for years, at a time of rising prices and the prospect of not being able to walk straight into a job somewhere else, suddenly they seem a fair bit more ominous than than there were before.
2. Doing more with less - I'm talking about the internal communicators themselves, here. Again, it's nothing new to be asked to juggle more balls, wear more hats, work more miracles, but the current environment must surely be making more demands on people, I'm hearing of lots of internal comms teams going through their own restructures and cost-saving exercises, and I'm mindful of the emails I'm getting from people about workloads and coping mechanisms.
3. Leadership communication - this is not a new one, and it's probably on here more because it happens to be a personal passion of mine. Why did we ever think (and yes, let's not kid ourselves, we DID think, once upon a time) that we could take on the mantle of all communication ourselves? And even if we now know that it's a leadership responsibility, how can we expect them to do it without the proper support?  Leaders will be having to step up a gear around (1) and (2) just as much as internal communicators, and they will need the right support to do it.

So that was my humble opinion. What do you think? Like to agree, disagree or suggest some more? What do you expect to be focusing on over the next 12 months?

Sue